Cloud Backup: Myths and Misconceptions | Jungle Disk

When it comes to cloud backup, it can be confusing as to the difference between cloud storage and cloud backup. Often in technology, cloud storage and backup are used interchangeably. Here is a quick explanation of the difference between the two. Today, I would like to dig deeper into cloud backup and walk through four common myths and misconceptions.

It’s too expensive. - When you factor the total cost of running and maintaining your own on-site backup including hardware, software and operational expenses, a more cost effective alternative for most organizations is to choose a trusted backup provider like Jungle Disk. Jungle Disk offers a month to month subscription paying for what you use and with 2 license minimum including the first 20GB for free. Additional storage costs $0.15/GB/month compared to other providers charging as much as $1.50/GB or more. Like most cloud backup solutions, Jungle Disk’s backup is scalable up or down as needed. After initial upload, we only backup incremental changes, thus resulting in more costs savings.

It’s not secure.- This could not be farther from the truth. As an example, Jungle Disk encrypts user data with AES-256 encryption and user(s) select the master password key that only you know so you would not want to lose that password. Data is encrypted at rest and when in transit. This is of utmost importance if the data center was ever compromised. The data itself is unusable since it is encrypted. Also, location of the data center is important and for most cloud backup providers, data centers are typically situated in low-risk areas. (i.e. weather)

I’m backing up locally, why do I need cloud backup too?- Sound business practice recommends at least three forms of backups - locally, external (external hard drive or USB) and remotely in the cloud. Remember, your business isn’t really safe if you’re just backing up locally or using an external HD/USB since there is such a thing as hard drive failure and unforeseen errors. From personal experience, I’ve been on numerous calls with small business owners that were not backing up their server and they’ve experience hard drive failure and to recover the hard drive was very expensive. We get many calls after the fact, when it’s likely too late to implement backup solutions to help recover your data.

I’ve also been on calls with businesses that were affected by a major storm on the East Coast and the servers were located in the basement where flooding occurred. The business owner did not have a failover in place. Moral of the story, unforeseeable things happen so it’s best to have your most critical data backed up remotely so you have redundancy in place to recover your data if needed.

I already have cloud storage.- Cloud storage is an efficient collaboration tool that’s like a file server that allows users to access, share, transfer and view files online/remotely. It’s possible for cloud storage solutions such as OneDrive and Good Drive to experience outages or get infected by malware. Given these possibilities, a good rule of thumb is to backup your cloud storage to have a safe, second copy of your data. Some key cloud backup benefits that I have mentioned in previous blog posts include the ability to restore data in case of hardware failure, fire or theft, ability to set retention period for compliance, ability to schedule backups automatically or manually and the ability to have remote access to your files anywhere on-the-go.

Your business data isn’t really safe unless it’s backed up remotely with a provider like Jungle Disk. If we can help you at all with your data security plans, please reach out!